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Tipping Point
=Host= Ben Shephard =Broadcast= RDF Television for ITV1, 2 July 2012 to present as Tipping Point: Lucky Stars: ITV, 9 June 2013 to present =Synopsis= Back in the day, seaside arcades were full of those mechanical contraptions that push 2p coins so that they fall, and push other coins down, and cascade to win as much as eight new pence. The press office blurb suggests this show has a similar contraption. The star of Tipping Point is a huge machine that takes in counters, and spits them out. Put the counter in at the back of the machine, and it pushes other counters around. Some of them might fall down to the next level, and so on down, and any that fall down out of the machine are awarded to the contenders. The concept is familiar to those of us who spent out youth in seaside arcades: the machines there took in every 2p piece we had, and every 2p piece it spat out went back in. How is this going to turn into a game of skill and judgement? Players are able to insert their counters into one of four "drop zones", from where the counter will bounce around on some pegs in the path. It might roll to the left, it might roll to the right, it might come to a halt somewhere in the middle. The contender controls exactly when their counter gets released, hoping that it can be pulled a little way out and lie flat rather than land on top of an existing counter. What's more, players only get to release a counter if they answer a general-knowledge question correctly. One question means one counter gets released. In the first round, four players are each issued with three counters. They're not physically given these counters, the players release their counters by pressing a button. They spend the whole game facing the machine, staring at its shelf, which advances and retreats like the tide. Round one begins with questions on the buzzers. A wrong answer relieves the player of one of their counters, and puts it into a penalty pot, which will be resolved later. Give a right answer, and the player can put one of their chips into the machine. Or they can tell one of the other players to put something in the machine, a little tactical opportunity. Players use this if they believe the machine is not likely to pay out. It rarely happens on the first drop, the producers rig the machine so that it'll pay out something straight away. Quickly, it becomes clear that Ben Shephard hasn't been employed purely for his ability to relate to players, and to keep cool under pressure – we already knew he could do these things. No, Ben's been given the gig because he's able to turn the most banal event into something worth watching. We're seeing plastic discs fall down onto a shelf, cause other plastic discs to shuffle about, possibly fall over the edge, and the process repeat on the next level down. Ben, bless his socks, provides a commentary on these droppings, gently cranking up the tension. It's a bravura performance, getting the viewer emotionally involved in this game of shuffle ha'penny. We are getting a slightly uncomfortable vibe from Ben's patter, constantly referring to the machine as "she", but only when it's being unhelpful and not giving out many tokens. Committing the pathetic fallacy is poetic license; being mildly sexist is avoidable. Anyway, round one continues. Players drop out when they have no more counters in hand, and at least one question will be addressed to one player only. Then the penalty pot will come into play: every question answered incorrectly has resulted in one token dropping out of play, and they're all awarded to the winner of one final question. That player's able to drop them in, one after another, and might be able to progress some counters to all drop at once. Every counter in this game is worth £50, but only the eventual winner can take any money home. Whoever has the lowest score after round one leaves with nothing. Round two is still one question for one chip, this time each player gets 30 seconds to build up their stock of counters and plays them all at once. The player in the lead has the option to take their questions first, or pass to one of their opponents; again, the slight tactics, but only slight because it's rare that four or five counters won't produce something useful. The lowest aggregate score after the opening two rounds leaves the game. Round three is the head-to-head, three questions will be asked to each of the players. A right answer means they get to insert the counter: a wrong one gives the counter to the opposition. There's also an option to pass the question across to the other player, who again needs to give the correct answer to retain the counter. Nothing novel in terms of gameplay, and Ben explains this better than we did. So far, the questions have been open, without any possible answers. They're moderately demanding questions, of the style "Which comedienne plays the title character in The Vicar of Dibley?". The viewer's question has three possible answers, and so do the questions in the final round. After inserting a jackpot counter in the machine (and taking any money that falls out) the contender is assigned six categories to choose from. For each category, they can pick a question worth one, two, or three counters, and of appropriately increasing difficulty. The objective of the final round is to get the jackpot chip back out of the machine: if the contender can nudge it out, they'll win £10,000. If not, they're given £50 for everything they've retrieved during the game. During the game, channels have begun to open up, chains of counters running parallel to the sides of the machine. If the jackpot counter falls into one of these channels, we reckon that it could come out in as few as six counters, if the player is very very lucky. More usually, it'll take fifteen or more counters and still a slice of luck. After playing all six categories, and assuming the jackpot is still in there somewhere, the player is offered a final offer: three more counters to extract the jackpot, but if they fail, they will leave with nothing. Only if the jackpot is right at the edge does this represent reasonable value. Otherwise, the player would be wise to take their winnings, typically somewhere around £2500. =Catchphrases= '(contestant's name) we've found your tipping point' =Inventor= Hugh Rycroft for RDF =Theme music= Marc Sylvan =Trivia= The show was originally a 5pm summer replacement slot for The Chase; it returned in 2013 at 4pm, and proved markedly more popular than Deal or No Deal on the other side before it was moved to a 3pm slot in 2015. Celebrity editions of the programme went out in summer 2013, under the somewhat clunky title Tipping Point: Lucky Stars. It contained stars hoping to be lucky, geddit!? The record for the largest number of counters taken from the machine in a single drop is 23. This was achieved on 16 June 2013 by TV presenter Rav Wilding on an episode of the celebrity version of the programme. Unfortunately for his opponent, ex-snooker player Dennis Taylor, Wilding's scoring was strong throughout, so by Taylor's last go, he needed a mere 46 counters to draw level. Suffice it to say, it was Wilding who progressed to the final round. =Web links= Wikipedia entry =See also= Weaver's Week review Category:General Knowledge Quiz Category:Gambling Category:RDF Productions Category:Current